Abstract
The continuous shift symmetry of axions is at the heart of several realizations of inflationary models. In particular, axion monodromy inflation aims at achieving super-Planckian field ranges for the inflaton in the context of string theory. Despite the elegant underlying principle, explicit models constructed hitherto are exceedingly complicated. We propose a new and better axion monodromy inflationary scenario, where the inflaton potential arises from an F-term. We present several scenarios, where the axion arises from the Kaluza-Klein compactification of higher dimensional gauge fields (or p-form potentials) in the presence of fluxes and/or torsion homology. The monodromy corresponds to a change in the background fluxes, and its F-term nature manifests in the existence of domain walls interpolating among flux configurations. Our scenario leads to diverse inflaton potentials, including linear large field behaviour, chaotic inflation, as well as potentials with even higher powers. They provide an elegant set of constructions with properties in the ballpark of the recent BICEP2 observational data on primordial gravitational waves.
Highlights
The possible first detection of primordial gravitational waves by the BICEP2 collaboration [1] has opened an exciting new chapter in observational cosmology
We propose a new and better axion monodromy inflationary scenario, where the inflaton potential arises from an F-term
Motivated by the recent observational data of the BICEP2 collaboration, we have proposed a new class of string theory models realizing the idea of axion monodromy inflation
Summary
The possible first detection of primordial gravitational waves by the BICEP2 collaboration [1] has opened an exciting new chapter in observational cosmology. Appendix B contains computations regarding the dimensional reduction of massive axions
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